Ruidoso couple dodge bullets from comfort and safety of home

A Ruidoso couple on Rainbow Drive were startled to discover when police rolled up to their house recently that the officers thought they might actually be lying dead somewhere upstate.

Sandoval County detectives had asked police on Feb. 29 to check on the pair after finding their license plate on a vehicle abandoned in an open field.

“The abandoned vehicle had bullet holes throughout the chassis and there was what they believe to be brain matter and blood inside the vehicle,” the Ruidoso Police incident report said.

The plate number on the grisly discovery was registered to the couple’s Ford pickup, which the Ruidoso officers found parked near the couple’s apartment. It bore a different tag which police quickly learned had been reported stolen from a white Hyundai sedan in Albuquerque.

Officers found the couple inside talking on the phone with a Sandoval County detective.

It turned out the woman had been in Albuquerque more than a week earlier for a conference, during which she made a couple of visits to casinos. She was unaware that her plate had been changed.

Police concluded that thieves swapped the stolen plate for the Ruidoso pickup's and then put the pickup's on the gore-spattered vehicle in Sandoval County.